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at the back of my south-facing border, close to the wall where they'll be kept warm at night. As an experiment, one is planted in a bucket of semi-rotted compost, like a portable bean trench. All are staked with tall, strong bamboo canes. (They're only about 2

).It's not just my friends, I once viewed a flat and the prospective landlady pulled out a dead tomato plant that had been growing on her window sill, asking me why it hadn't fruited. From what I could tell it was a cordon type and was planted in a 10cm diameter

sweet peas that ended up in the border, but they're no giants.I've succeeded in my personal mission to beat Adam Pasco in the height stakes, as did our our colleague Ross, who managed to grow his sunflowers to a respectable 2m. Others weren't so lucky

by slugs and snails, and I spent many hours watching blackbirds foraging among the debris.In spring I tackled the garden in one go, removing leaves spiked on emerging bulbs, clearing spent stems and staking perennials. Only the still-sleeping frogs

This year I'm determined to only grow one variety of tomato. This is because my garden was overrun with tomato plants last year and I couldn't get onto my patio for growing bags and poorly staked cordons. So 2011 will see a more streamlined effort

first venture into growing fruit and veg, and the many mistakes I made while progressing to the level I'm at today (pretty good, I think). It's been a steep learning curve.For a brief spell, aged 11, I had a vegetable patch of my own. My mother – a

.We're challenging you to grow the world's tallest sunflower. The current world record stands at 8.03m, and is held by German flight attendant Hans Peter Schiffer. He took the record in 2009, but it's not been held by a Brit since 1976 (that was Frank Kelland, from

in old mouse burrows in the countryside. Nowadays, bumblebees more commonly nest in gardens. This makes wax moth a bit more of a problem than it used to be, when there were plenty of mouse holes in hedgerows to nest in.The female wax moth stakes out